Pictures of You
by Anja2
Summary: (One Shot) Hermione has left the wizarding world and Severus is reflecting on it will he find her again? read and review and I have a long prequel for it! ;-)


**Authors note: one shot story, I don't own the characters, they belong to the great J.K Rowling :-) I am sorry if the lay out of the story is not much to look at. Give it a read anyways and review. I took me a few hours to complete, and a lot of listening to the Cure as well. **

**The italics are from Goete's "Erlkönig" some of the lyrics I manipulated into the sotry are by The Cure, from "Pictures of you"**

**I tried to keep Severus as canon as possible, but not too OOC. If he came off kind of OOC please tell me. If I receive enough reviews, I may write a story around it ;-)**

  
  


**Pictures of You**

  
  


She's been gone for years. Away, like a good stiff breeze alone on a summer day, never to return. She's been gone from my world for longer than that even. Her parents, muggles, dead when she was just 17. Orphaned at 17, it's like tripping at the finish line. 

For as much as I loved her, it only proved my love more that I could let her go, or so I thought. She didn't understand, but I should have, I was more than twice her age, I should have known, but I didn't. And that was my downfall. All over, it was like being 16 and in love for the first time, sweaty handholding, hiding it from friends and peers for fear of teasing, sloppy kisses and unsure groping in the dark. All at once wonderful and new, but uncomfortable, as the nagging in my head lectured me at what wrongs I was commiting. I shouldn't be going through this, she was my student, and I was above this, beyond it. Why was I staying? Assigning her detentions that inevitably led to one or both of us naked before backing out at the last minute, usually to one or the other's disgust with ourselves. 

I guess that's all gone now, never to be seen again. Like bad memories shoved into the bottom of a pensieve and left in the back of a closet, meant to be avoided until years later when enough time has gone by that one genuinely does not know what is contained within the silvery liquid, swirling and swimming before your eyes. 

I thought it was gone for years. Ten to be exact. Well, not exact, more or less approximating maybe closer to 11. I am an old man now by muggle standards. Middle age has come and gone for me, and it was not nearly as eventful as the later days of my prime adulthood. I turned 50 as alone as I 10 years earlier, and yet, I was more troubled now than then, and Voldemort was still at large then. None of it mattered because I missed her so much. 

In my dreams she's off, living on a deserted beach that's not too sunny, and not too rainy. I can see the cool salty breeze flowing in and out of her hair, between her fingers and pearly white sand tickling her toes. She laughs a lot, smiling and waving at me, brown eyes gleaming, as if she knew something all along, that I was never let onto. A secret that has transcended time and place and seeped into my dreams. Her skin glows like an angel's, and she turns every which way into and away from the breeze, kicking over pink seashells, and smooth black rocks. Kicking sand out into the wide blue ocean, though it comes back as fast because of the wind. It's like living in a cloud, the way fog rolls onto the beach and an eternal mist clings in the air. Somedays she can barely see her feet in front of her. On these days she stays inside, curled up by the fire like a cold cat, reading whatever tome she has been able to aquire from a local antique book seller.   
She's adjusted to living an almost completely Muggle life. After all, she is muggle born. She probable no longer reads the daily prophet, and ventures into the wizarding world only when something to keep her house running is needed. Or maybe when she craves a new book. 

Sometimes I am with her, and other times I am not. Sometimes there's a small bassinet in the corner, and other times just a pair of dogs on a rug by a large firplace. In my concious mind I know that I should have gone after her, and brought her back. But I know now that it is far to late to do such a thing. That now it is long past a time for rescuing, and if I was to show up at her door now, she would no longer remember me. 

I often wonder if there is an alternate universe. Parallel to our own, where every decision we make her, there is the opposite one in the universe. Somewhere out there, I am on that beach with Hermione. We are happy, and I never was in the service of Voldemort. I look many years younger because I have never had the stress and troubles I have here, in this world. I've also considered using a time turner to go back, but Albus has seen to it that I cannot use them. He knows how my mind works and sometimes I damn him to hell for it. I want her back and no one understands what I would do for it. I would kill, use unforgivable curses and risk Azkaban for the chance to kiss her again. I took for granted she was with me. I wouldn't care about age, about status or about the laws and rules of this world or the next. I would die for her and never think twice about it. 

There is no other world though, and all I have are these pictures. She is no longer bright and bubbly in them. She rarely is completely in the frame and her edges are blurred and folded from being held for so long and from being folded and unfolded, carried in my pocket and sat out at different intervals during my life. Her hair is not so bright and shiny and her eyes have developed little wrinkles from smiling all the time. She looks tired and older. 

She would be nearly 28 years old by now, but I have no idea where she is to send her an owl. I have tried, and they have come back to me weeks later, letter still attached to their leg. She is no longer receiving mail. Or maybe she has just gone so far away that no one can find her. I cannot believe it though. She loved us so much. Witchery offered such a vast supply of information, a never ending library of books that needed to be read. I cannot believe that there is a small reason for her leaving the wizarding world as abruptly as she did. I have tried to contact Potter. He said that her wand has been out of use for 10 years. 

Albus has cut my work load down to only a few classes a week, and a new professor is picking up the slack I have left. Teaching and children do nothing for me anymore. Potions has never been my passion and it was beginning to show in my work. 

A letter is unopened on my desk, baring the headmaster's personal crest. Deep plum in color, I am afraid to open it, as if a snake may come out and bite me. 

It is what I have dreaded for years. I know it is. The wax picks up from the parchment with a light 'POP'. 

I do not need to read it, because I know something has happened. She has been found, and this letter will be my ticket to her. Although I know someone else has found my Hermione. Time has never been on my side less than it is at this moment. 

She is slipping away from my dreams and my heart. Spinning down to the bottom of the pensieve in the back of the closet, away from me for another 10 years. I cannot lose her again, but I know that i will. 

  
  


_"I love thee will, with me thou shalt ride on my course,   
And if thou'rt unwilling, I seize thee by force!"   
"Oh, father, my father! thy child closer clasp,   
The Erl King hath seized me with icy grasp!" _

  
  


I cannot ride fast enough to get to her in time. There is nothing I can do but hold my breath and pray. God? Can you hear me? It's Severus. I know I have not talked to you in a long time, but I need to ask you a favour... Can you imagine that? Me, Severus Snape talking to God like some small child asking for gifts from St. Nicholas. Perhaps begging is more in order, now that I am nearly arrived to the small town where she is resting. 

Resting is an understatment. Her small house is comparable to that of a shack, with a large array of vegtibles growing outside of her door. Inside it is much like the beach front house I have pictured, small and cozy, wooden floors and a large stone fireplace. There is no laughter here. She lay in a bed, close enough to a fire to risk catching herself. She was stone white, her delicate bones, jutting out from taut skin, breathing deeply and irratically. I knew it was useless, standing in the doorway. I wanted to take her away to Hogwarts, but I knew I couldn't. 

I made my way over to her bedside, and sat down by he tiny waist, and held her in my arms, like a sick child. 

  
  


_His father shudder'd, his pace grew more wild,   
He held to his bosom his poor moaning child.   
He reached that house with toil and dread -   
But in his arms lo! his child lay dead. _

  
  


As the fire died, late in the night, she slipped away into darkness, dancing forever in the silvery liquid of all of our minds. There was nothing in the world that I ever wanted more than to never feel the breaking apart of all my pictures of her. 

  
  


  
  



End file.
